1/6 Ben Kenobi & Luke Skywalker.... on eBay now!

well, the title says it all. The all consuming honeymoon plans strike again. In order to bring in more funds for the wedding and honeymoon I'm putting these two figures up for sale. They're on eBay now and for the next ten days.

I loved painting these, and am really pleased with how they turned out. I hope you like them, and that they go to a good home!! (it's sad to see them go, whenever it's something you painted for yourself, and was the first of it's kind... you feel like you're letting go of a rare prototype or something)

But I know they'll go to someone who'll appreciate them, and it will just give me an excuse to buy new ones next year and paint them again for myself! Good luck with the auctions!!

(Click the below images to go to the relevant auctions)

I'm back...

Well, the new windows are in... my office desk is rebuilt (it was in front of the window and had to be taken apart, including my computer), but after a week of not really being able to do anything (there was dust everywhere) ... I'm now back at work!

I've got a week's worth of messages and emails to reply to.. and then I'm back sculpting and painting. Working my way through the huge amount of commissions that are sitting on my desk in front of me. Hopefully, without any distractions now, I'll be able to get through them slightly faster. (wedding/honeymoon planning aside).

I'm starting with a Neo (Matrix) repaint which I've virtually finished, and a Padme (Star Wars) resculpt.... once those are done I'll post here what I've moved onto next.

Ok, this was just a short post to let you know where I'm at... back to work for me. Yay!

Darren

Why does is have to be now....

After 10 years of waiting, our landlord has finally decided to replace our old falling-apart windows with new double glazing. Yay!

On one hand this is fabulous news, we've been waiting a long time for this. On the other hand It's taking 4 days of our time when we have wedding stuff to plan, but more importantly (from my point of view) I've had to take my office apart to give them access to the windows... so I have no desk, no computer, nowhere to paint, nowhere to sculpt... etc, until it's all finished. (I'm on Jane's laptop at the moment sneaking this ten minutes to let you know why I might not be answering any emails at the moment)

I'm not ignoring you on purpose.

Bear with me though, it'll be back to normal hopefully before the end of the week (and will probably take me two days to answer all the emails that have probably built up!). Then I'll get back to trying to get as many commissions as possible finished before our Wedding at the end of September.

Right... I've got to go now, the builders have started drilling again and I can barely hear myself thing!

Speak to you soon,

Darren

Sideshow Darth Matul - repainted

This is the Sideshow 12" Darth Maul figure from the film Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (which I actually really like!)

This is another really good figure that Sideshow produced, and looks great just as it comes... however the eyes always looked a bit sleepy for me. And although you can use that to get some great arrogant cocky looking poses out of him... I just wanted a tad more anger out of him. But not too much. So I repainted him.

The problem I quickly found was that it wasn't the paint on the eyes that made him look sleepy, it was the sculpt.. they were sculpted quite closed (as are many of Sideshows figures it seems), so it was impossible to give him any kind of look that I wanted to recreate from the movie or the promotional images.

I didn't have time to resculpt the eyes (which I would have liked to have done) so I cheated. When I was painting the eyes, I carefully took the paint of the eyeball slightly over the eyelids... essentially making the eyeball appear larger when you're looking at it. This allows me to give him the expression I wanted.

If you look at the figure really close up in hand, then you can see what I've done... but if you look at the figure from a normal distance? It just looks like he's got wider eyes. Fantastic!

I also repainted the tatoos, as I've never seen any figure of Maul that have the design of these accurate to the film. They always seem too thin and 'weedy'. So I fixed that ;)

Here's a before and after pic to give you an idea. I'll post some more pics when I take them, hopefully soon.

(as always click on the images for larger versions)

BEFORE

(I got the before pic off the internet, my apologies to whoever it belonged to, but I forgot to take my own... duh. This was the closest one I found that has a paint job similar to my own)

AFTER

Old Ben Kenobi - repainted

This is Sideshow's (brilliant!) old Ben'Obi-Wan' Kenobi figure from Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. This is one of their better figures that they've released, and even without anything done to it just looks AMAZING when it's on display on our shelf. The detail on the sculpt is unbelievable, as is the likeness. (Well done Trevor!)

You all know me by now though, and I can't leave anything alone for long.... so along with another one that I was doing for a customer, I repainted this head. Here's the results. It really shows off just how great this head sculpt is!

Enjoy!

Darren

(as usual click the images for larger versions)